Letter: Time to decrease defense spending

July 18, 2018

To the Editor:

If President Trump and congressional Republicans really want to force some NATO members to increase defense spending to at least 2 percent of their GDP, then the answer is rather simple: reduce our defense spending from 3.5 percent to 2.75 percent of GDP and then reduce the number of troops stationed around the world from about 175,000 at the present to say 80,000.

Redeploying troops from Germany, Japan, U.K. Belgium, S. Korea, France, Italy and Poland would immediately force these and other countries to increase their defense spending.

At the present time, the U.S. has troops in over 170 countries and our defense spending dwarfs the defense spending of both Russia and China, so reducing the number of troops stationed in Europe and Asia would not impact our national defense.

Of course, the problem with the above idea is that Republicans, instead of cutting defense spending, would want to increase the already bloated defense budget, which is something Republicans love to do,